Even as the year draws to a close, 2024 keeps taking them away from us. Jimmy Carter, America’s best ex-president, died Dec. 29 at 100. Olivia Hussey, famed for director Franco Zeffirelli’s “Romeo & Juliet” but also a lead in the shot-in-Canada slasher flick “Black Christmas,” gone two days earlier at 73.
TCM always does a thoughtful, moving tribute late every December and this year, as seen in the above video, is no exception. Nashville recording artists Birdtalker perform the song used on this year’s memorial tribute, “Life’s a Trip.”
Two towering talents in the world of Canadian film, Norman Jewison and Donald Sutherland, are among those saluted by TCM this December. Both died in the past year, as did SCTV‘s great American-born funnyman, Joe Flaherty.
In the world of comedy, we lost three amazing originals: Bob Newhart, Richard Lewis and Martin Mull. In music, producer Quincy Jones, who I first came to know as the guy who wrote that crazy, rap-theme to the original Bill Cosby sitcom of the late ’60s/early ’70s, died in November at 91. Kris Kristofferson left us even earlier in September at 88.
Teri Garr — boy, there was something about her, so funny in “Young Frankenstein,” so winning and yet quirky and vulnerable on Letterman. Shelley Duvall, Gena Rowlands, Maggie Smith, all unforgettable. Shannen Doherty, sad she is gone so young.
One of Canada’s great broadcasters also left us: Bob Cole, who brought you to every Hockey Night in Canada game he ever called, was also the play-by-play voice many of us clung to as we snuck radios into classrooms across Canada during the 1972 Canada-USSR Summit Series. O, Baby.
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The death of Mike Bullard, a polarizing comedian who hosted a late night talk show in Canada that lasted seven seasons and almost a thousand episodes, came as a shock. I seemed to write about him once a month when I was typing for The Toronto Sun.
None of the following is on TCM’s last but they were all TV Hall of Famers. Gone as well is a TV critic I admired as a reader and as a colleague: Mike Duffy from The Detroit Free Press. As is one of those TV sensations who, well, you just had to be there in the ’70s, especially in Canada: The Amazing Kreskin. And Phil Donahue and Peter Marshall, the later as “master” of The Hollywood Squares, were two of the biggest stars ever in network broadcast daytime television.
Hard to know what category to put Richard Simmons. Perhaps one of a kind. Same goes for Dr. Ruth Westheimer.
I’ll sure miss Bill Vigars (above left), who ran halfway across Canada with Terry Fox. What a fine, delightfully mischievous gentleman he was. I’ll think of him now every time I look at a new five dollar bill. And Maureen Donaldson — an LA-based photographer who knew more stars than you could fit on a TCM list, including Cary Grant. She would have been the best podcast guest ever. The world is a duller place without her in it.
